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May 14, 2023

Chicago’s lucrative parking meters, and other nonpolitical political stories

Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in

Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional resolution making The Star-Spangled Banner the national anthem of the United States.

They might make you want to pull a Cool Hand Luke and decapitate the lot of them, but parking meters turn out to be great investments in places like Chicago, which privatized those money-mauling machines years ago.

A struggling dairy farmer turns over part of his land to solar power. Vermont's emergency services need CPR. And Colorado legislators are going after EpiPen prices. These are your weekly nonpolitical yet political stories.

If you’re new here: The Daily 202 generally focuses on national politics and foreign policy. But as passionate believers in local news, and in redefining "politics" as something that hits closer to home than Beltway "Senator X Hates Senator Y" stories, we try to bring you a weekly mix of pieces with significant local, national or international import.

Please keep sending your links to news coverage of political stories that are getting overlooked. They don't have to be from this week! The submission link is right under this column. Make sure to say whether I can use your first name, last initial and location. Anonymous is okay, too, with location.

Over at the Chicago Sun-Times, Fran Spielman recently took stock of the annual KPMG audit of the Windy City's privatized parking meters, underground garages, and the Chicago Skyway for 2021 and, well, maybe The Daily 202 should have gone into a different field.

Meters generated $136.2 million last year. Underground city-owned (but not operated) parking garages made $22 million. The Chicago Skyway took in $114.3 million. And "[n]ot a penny of those revenues went to ease the burden on Chicago taxpayers," Spielman wrote.

"With 61 years left on the 75-year lease, Chicago Parking Meters LLC now has recouped its entire $1.16 billion investment and $502.5 million more." The beneficiaries include "[p]rivate investors from as far away as Abu Dhabi."

The politics: The public sector here seems to have scored $1.16 billion but effectively divested itself from what has become a lucrative income stream that could have been used to benefit taxpayers in numerous ways.

Reader John S. from Cobleskill, N.Y., shared this testimonial. It's a first-person essay, not the work of a reporter, but I’m sharing it because it's a common enough sight in my home state of Vermont, where a drive from Middlebury to Burlington takes you past acres of solar panels.

Writing in the Daily Gazette of Schenectady, N.Y., farmer Jon Close writes about not getting by with dairy production and deciding to lease some of his land to the renewable energy firm Boralex, which will set up a bulk solar power facility.

"Currently, our milk price is less than the cost to produce, so a net loss is built into the paradigm. No matter how you scale a loss, it cannot become profitable. Thankfully, there is a third option: solar."

The politics: This isn't without its controversies. There have been arguments over the years about the aesthetic trade-offs and about finding other ways to save farms.

Staying in the neighborhood. Over at Seven Days VT, Colin Flanders diagnosed the current crisis in emergency health care in Vermont, which threatens to shut big parts of, say, ambulance services.

"The crisis was years in the making and, in many ways, inevitable. Ambulance crews have never made enough money to cover their costs, and the industry has been steadily losing its most vital subsidy: volunteers. To defray their growing payrolls, agencies are seeking more municipal support, frustrating local officials who have grown accustomed to cheap and reliable coverage. Many Vermont towns are just now learning the true cost of around-the-clock ambulance service," Flanders wrote.

The politics: Health care policy in America is suffering on several fronts, and rural health care seems to be taking a special pounding, with dramatic and even deadly repercussions. Will politicians find a solution?

A lot of ink has (understandably) been spilled about federal efforts to rein in drug costs, but states have led the way. And Helen Santoro of Kaiser Health News has you covered on Colorado, the first state to cap insulin prices, looking to do the same with EpiPens.

"The bill is the latest example in a nationwide push by states to address the soaring prices of lifesaving drugs. New Hampshire passed a law in 2020 requiring insurance to cover the autoinjectors, and Rhode Island lawmakers are considering a similar measure this year. No state has capped what consumers pay for EpiPens, though the New Jersey Senate passed a bill in June to do so; that measure is pending in the legislature's lower house," Santoro reported.

The politics: Reducing drug costs is a vastly popular political priority. Some states aren't waiting for Washington.

See an important political story that doesn't quite fit traditional politics coverage? Flag it for us here.

"Amazon will pause construction at the second headquarters it is building in Arlington, the company confirmed Friday, adding delays to a multiyear plan to bring 25,000 employees to its new offices in Northern Virginia as it cuts jobs across the country," Teo Armus and Rachel Lerman report.

"As a reporter and an anchor for Fox News watched Donald Trump supporters gather at a rally in Washington, D.C., after his election defeat in November 2020, they both had some questions," Jeremy Barr reports.

"When Lachlan Murdoch, the head of Fox News's parent company, learned of this on-air exchange, he was displeased."

" Alex Murdaugh was sentenced Friday morning to consecutive life sentences in prison after having been found guilty of killing his wife and son. He had been expected to receive at least 30 years but not receive the death penalty. Murdaugh briefly spoke, twice, maintaining his innocence," Timothy Bella, Anumita Kaur, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Ben Brasch report.

"The Supreme Court on Thursday called for more briefing on whether it should still decide one of the term's most important cases, involving whether state legislators may manipulate congressional district lines and set federal voting rules without any oversight from state courts," Robert Barnes reports.

"After weeks of questions about contamination associated with a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday ordered rail company Norfolk Southern to test the area for dioxins, a dangerous and persistent class of pollutants created when plastic is burned. The train that crashed there Feb. 3 was carrying chemicals used to make plastics," Scott Dance reports.

"As the decade-long bull market came stuttering to an end and tech stock prices fell throughout last year, pressure to cut costs from Wall Street built and in the past few months a deluge of layoffs and cost-cutting has flooded Silicon Valley. The big-idea side projects that were supposed to become the revenue-drivers of the future have been particularly hard hit, with some of them being completely dismantled, and others facing deep cuts," Gerrit De Vynck, Caroline O’Donovan and Naomi Nix report.

Bonus Friday fun: Pretend you’re in Congress and we’ll give you a committee assignment

"The first three witnesses to testify privately before the new Republican-led House committee investigating the ‘weaponization’ of the federal government have offered little firsthand knowledge of any wrongdoing or violation of the law, according to Democrats on the panel who have listened to their accounts. Instead, the trio appears to be a group of aggrieved former F.B.I. officials who have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and received financial support from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump," the New York Times's Luke Broadwater and Adam Goldman report.

"Pavel Sorokin, Russia's deputy energy minister, is part of a cadre of young technocrats with deep knowledge of the West, fast-tracked by Vladimir Putin to the upper echelons of power. Mr. Sorokin, who studied finance in London, has negotiated deals in Africa and the Middle East. He played an early role in the development of OPEC+, the partnership between Russia's oil industry and the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries," the Wall Street Journal's Benoit Faucon reports.

"President Biden's team is moving quickly to build a ‘national advisory board’ stocked with Democratic governors, senators and other political stars who will travel and speak on Biden's behalf during his expected reelection campaign, an early effort to unify party leaders and minimize the chance of dissent," Tyler Pager and Matt Viser report.

"Biden will host German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Friday in what will be, on the surface, another display of Western unity with Ukraine as it repels Russia's punishing invasion. But the show of solidarity comes against a backdrop of growing strain as the trans-Atlantic alliance works to remain in lockstep while grappling with the fact that the war has no end in sight," Politico's Jonathan Lemire and Eli Stokols report.

"House Democrats were infuriated and taken aback by President Biden's announcement on Thursday that he will sign a resolution to nix the District of Columbia's crime bill," the Hill's Al Weaver and Mychael Schnell report.

"The crime bill has come under heavy criticism from Republicans and centrist Democrats. But last month, 173 House Democrats voted along with what they thought was the White House's stance that Biden would veto the resolution in an attempt to stand up for the District's ‘home rule.’"

"Away from the front line, Russia has relentlessly targeted Ukraine's infrastructure. Attacks on power plants and communication towers, which are under U.N. investigation as potential war crimes, have added to the daily trauma endured by millions of Ukrainians," Ruby Mellen, Zoeann Murphy, Kostiantyn Khudov, Yutao Chen and Kasia Strek report.

"Throughout the gray winter, cities across the country have been plunged into cold and darkness."

"House Democrats embraced three favorite words during their annual retreat: Speaker Hakeem Jeffries," Politico's Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz report.

"As the new Congress enters its third month, Democrats are full of bluster about their chances of recapturing the majority next year and handing Jeffries the gavel. Some lawmakers made possibly intentional verbal flubs, referring to their ‘majority’ leaders, as they talked about efforts to unite behind a winning 2024 message."

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has found a comfort zone as he moves closer to launching a campaign for president: America's bluest states, where he is brawling with liberal governors and mingling with donors as he tiptoes around a direct conflict with Donald Trump," Maeve Reston and Hannah Knowles report.

"DeSantis will travel this weekend to California, where the Republican has already drawn the renewed ire of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent critic taunting him ahead of his visit. ‘Welcome to the real freedom state,’ Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement to The Washington Post, predicting his GOP counterpart is ‘going to get smoked by Trump’ in the Republican primary. DeSantis aides did not respond to a request for comment."

At 2 p.m., Biden will meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Oval Office.

Biden will leave for Delaware at 3:45 p.m.

How closely have you been following the news this week? Test yourself with the weekend edition of On the Record, The Post's new daily news quiz.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.